The Trumpet-Major | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.

THE TRUMPET-MAJOR being a tale of the Trumpet-Major, John
Loveday, a soldier in the war with Buonaparte, and Robert, his brother,

first mate in the Merchant Service.
by Thomas Hardy

PREFACE
The present tale is founded more largely on testimony--oral and
written--than any other in this series. The external incidents which
direct its course are mostly an unexaggerated reproduction of the
recollections of old persons well known to the author in childhood, but
now long dead, who were eye-witnesses of those scenes. If wholly
transcribed their recollections would have filled a volume thrice the
length of 'The Trumpet-Major.'
Down to the middle of this century, and later, there were not wanting,
in the neighbourhood of the places more or less clearly indicated herein,
casual relics of the circumstances amid which the action moves--our
preparations for defence against the threatened invasion of England by
Buonaparte. An outhouse door riddled with bullet-holes, which had
been extemporized by a solitary man as a target for firelock practice
when the landing was hourly expected, a heap of bricks and clods on a
beacon-hill, which had formed the chimney and walls of the hut
occupied by the beacon-keeper, worm-eaten shafts and iron heads of
pikes for the use of those who had no better weapons, ridges on the
down thrown up during the encampment, fragments of volunteer
uniform, and other such lingering remains, brought to my imagination
in early childhood the state of affairs at the date of the war more vividly
than volumes of history could have done.
Those who have attempted to construct a coherent narrative of past
times from the fragmentary information furnished by survivors, are
aware of the difficulty of ascertaining the true sequence of events
indiscriminately recalled. For this purpose the newspapers of the date
were indispensable. Of other documents consulted I may mention, for
the satisfaction of those who love a true story, that the 'Address to all
Ranks and Descriptions of Englishmen' was transcribed from an

original copy in a local museum; that the hieroglyphic portrait of
Napoleon existed as a print down to the present day in an old woman's
cottage near 'Overcombe;' that the particulars